Oscar's Oceanside — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

This is going to be a lengthy review because my time spent here for my birthday celebration was ATROCIOUS! Every year for my birthday I choose a new higher end restaurant to celebrate with friends and I’ve never had such a terrible experience as I did here. Let’s start by how rude the manager was ! After we were seated with half the party present I went to order my food and the manager told me he wasn’t going to take my order until the rest of the party got there. I didn’t quite understand that because we only needed half of my party to be there in order to be seated so I’m thinking once I’m seated why would there be an issue to order food? Obviously that’s why I’m there. Mind you my party was of 7…..yes a whole SEVEN People and 4 of us were already there. But whatever their policy was is their policy and I wasn’t going to argue but after I proceeded to tell the manager I was starving and wasn’t feeling well and that I would like to order he proceeded to rudely tell me “I don’t think the rest of your guests would appreciate you ordering without them”. Mind you it’s MY birthday and my friend had to tell this man that they didn’t care if I ordered or not cause it was my birthday and I was free to do what I wanted.

That was strike one because we did not get a warm or friendly welcome from the manager at all. Now let’s start on the pitiful service we received. We had to beg the waiter for the bare minimum of just having straws, drink napkins etc. my friend ordered a round of shots while we waited on food and it took us 45 minutes to get the round of shots. When we finally got the shots we ordered another round….that was yet another 30-40 minute wait for shots. The waiter never actually checked in on our table to ask if we needed anything, we literally had to get up and fetch someone to get any type of attention. Mind you we all tried to be empathetic and understanding because they were “understaffed” and outside of my party of 7 there was like a party of 30 of what it looked like a work event but outside of that party and mine, there were people seated at the bar and the rest of the few tables that were there when we arrived had already left so they were not packed out or wall to wall. It was a Tuesday evening in the off-season so even with one large party I don’t see any excuse on waiting almost an hour for SHOTS! My party started at 7 and this establishment closes at 9 so in two hours we received two shots as a whole. That’s beyond ridiculous. Now let’s get on when we were over the neglectful service and we’re ready to leave we had to ask the waiter SEVERAL times to bring our tabs. Guess how long we waited on tabs lol just another 30 minutes SMH it was almost 10 o’clock meaning we were in this place almost an hour after they closed trying to pay tabs that the waiter didn’t seem interested in coming to receive payment. 3 of us ended up paying our tabs while the others still had not even received a tab or was waiting on waiter to pick payment up. One of my friends paid with cash and literally had to remind the waiter that she was still waiting on change that he didn’t bring back over an extensive period of time. Everything took these people at least 30 min to do. It was awful. I’ll never suggest this place to anyone. I can only imagine how it is during peak season of the summer. And oh yea. We were all promised discounts but the only discount that was received was them comping my chicken...

Edit: Service speaks. It's been a week since I followed up with the restaurant's management via email (as they asked in their response to our review), and they have yet to call back to apologize for our experience.

I’ll start with the good, because there’s not much of it: The cocktails were great. The lobster bites were delicious, if not basically a knockoff of your typical firecracker/bang-bang shrimp. Kayla, our waitress, was nice.

Now for the bad, which was honestly kind of embarrassing for an “elegant” oceanfront restaurant.

I get it. Valentine’s Day is rough for any restaurant. You should expect a little bit of a wait when it comes to seating and food. Unfortunately, as you can tell from other recent reviews, Oscar’s performance was more than lacking. We arrived a few minutes early for our 8pm reservation, were sat within a few minutes, and put in orders for drinks, appetizers, and entrees about 15 minutes later — bundled to help save time.

I kid you not, it took almost two hours for our entrees to come out. In that span of time my wife visited the restroom twice, and on her second visit spoke with another patron who asked when we ordered and whether or not we’d received our food. When my wife relayed that we arrived half an hour earlier than this other customer and still didn’t have food, the other customer said “Oh no, it’s time to go.”

During our wait, our waitress came by once to tell us that our food would be out “in a few minutes” (this turned out to be false). Meanwhile, a manager was going table to table speaking with parties who had open tickets, reassuring customers that food would be coming “soon.” He never came to our table, and we saw at least one other couple get up and leave before getting their food, obviously disappointed in their experience.

When our food did finally arrive, we were shocked by the quality (or lack thereof). The $66 16oz. ribeye I ordered was no more than half an inch thick, and was honestly the chewiest, toughest piece of meat I’ve had. I’ve received bigger, better 12oz. ribeyes at Texas Roadhouse. The single scoop of mashed potatoes I got? Completely unseasoned. Not a hint of salt, pepper, garlic, or any other herb that one might typically expect in high-end sides. My wife’s scallops were just as bad. She ate maybe 1/2 of her entree because the scallops tasted fishy (not in a good, fresh way) and the lemon risotto was teetering between room temperature and cold.

All in all, this was an experience totally unworthy of a $240 bill. We left shortly before 10:30pm, roughly 2 1/2 hours after arriving, feeling that a drive-thru dinner from Taco Bell would have been more satisfying. We still left our waitress a $60 cash tip, because the restaurant’s inability to handle large traffic isn’t her fault and she still spent her evening serving others to the best of her ability.

We will not be returning to this establishment, and we cannot recommend it to anyone reading...

We have been to Oscar's before and really loved it. We even had a lovely conversation with the owner who stopped by our table on our first visit just months after they originally opened. We liked it so much, we had it as an option for out of town guests when they were visiting us. We dined there, again, this evening and, while the food was excellent, I was VERY upset at the misrepresentation of the "1/2 Rack of Lamb" on the menu for Restaurant Week. A full rack is 8 ribs, making 1/2 rack, 4 ribs. Two nights prior, we had dinner at Chops, the sister restaurant, and I specifically asked how many ribs were on the "1/2 Rack of Lamb" listed on the menu. Our waiter at Chops, Daniel, said there were 4. I LOVE Rack of Lamb and not many restaurants offer it, however at his suggestion, I ordered the Short Rib instead as he said it was only offered for Restaurant Week & not typically on the menu. However, tonight at Oscar’s, I really wanted the 1/2 Rack of Lamb. Imagine my shock when only 2 very small chops/ribs were served to me. It was more like an appetizer on a bed of mashed potatoes as each chop was barely 1 bite. TINY! I did not want to make a scene as there was another couple directly next to us at the window & our waiter was very attentive and polite. Additionally, I started to think that maybe I misread the menu and was remembering the one from 2 nights earlier. But on our way out, I looked at the menu, again, and it definitely said “1/2 Rack of Lamb”. Before considering writing this revue, I wanted to give the restaurant the chance to address my concerns and their “misrepresentation” on the menu, first. I emailed them with all the above details. Crickets. So I called the next day and spoke to the floor manager who said he would pass on my concerns to the GM/Owner and someone would get back to me. That was last week. Still crickets. So, hence the reason for my Google revue. It is a pricey restaurant but worth it IF you get what you pay for and sadly, this time we did not. Let me say in closing that we recently had dinner at Isle of Capri here in Virginia Beach, which is also on the oceanfront and their Rack of Lamb was the most generous and best I had experienced in the area, let alone anywhere else! I was hoping that tonight, Oscar's would be stiff competition based on our prior experience there, but that was not the case. Very disappointed in their lack of response, but mostly in paying for something I did not actually get...